In the wake of intense criticism about spam and political propaganda on its platform, Twitter Inc. today imposed new limits on automated posts and multiple posts coming from one account.

“To be clear,” Twitter said in a blog post, “Twitter prohibits any attempt to use automation for the purposes of posting or disseminating spam, and such behavior may result in enforcement action.”

These new rules will prohibit people from tweeting “identical or substantially similar” opinions across different accounts, while multiple accounts will not be able to like, retweet or follow. Twitter will make changes to its own apps such as TweetDeck and the Twitter API to ensure such activity doesn’t happen.

The company has come under considerable pressure after it was found that Russia-based operations used the platform to disseminate divisive content in the runup to the U.S. elections. And just recently, it was in the spotlight after bots of Russian origin wasted no time in stirring up the gun control debate immediately after the recent high school shootings in Parkland, Florida.

Twitter said users will be able to have a small number of “distinct” accounts, and the same content can be retweeted from any of them. But under the Automation Rules, “bulk, aggressive, or very high-volume automated Retweeting” will be banned. That will include the use of automation to tweet content with a hashtag so that topic will trend.

There will, however, be a dispensation for apps that post on multiple accounts if the post will “broadcast or share weather, emergency, or other public service announcements of broad community interest,” for example an earthquake or a tsunami alert.

The message seems clear: Twitter seems to want to put an end to the posting of the same content again and again from various accounts under one person’s control, even if the process is not automated. Multiple updates to a trending topic won’t be tolerated, either, if it’s believed the updates have “an intent to subvert or manipulate the topic, or to artificially inflate the prominence of a hashtag or topic.”

Twitter and other social media have been accused lately of being used to start “information warfare against the United States.” So it’s no surprise the company is taking big steps to change.

Still, the moves have spurred a backlash already in the #TwitterLockout campaign, with some critics feeling the “purge” is oppressive. After some conservatives charged that they lost thousands of followers, Twitter issued a statement to Gizmodo, which read in part: “Twitter’s tools are apolitical, and we enforce our rules without political bias.”

Image: mkhmarketing via Flickr